Donald Trump’s Election Day victory will go down in history for many reasons.
“This is probably the most incredible election ever in that we’ve never had a time when someone lost the popular vote by so much, and won the presidency without going to a vote in the House of Representatives,” says historian, author and Hedgeye Demography Sector Head Neil Howe.
Howe is referring to the rare case where no candidate wins a majority in the Electoral College and the vote is put to the House of Representatives. This is called a contingent election. “We’ve had this two times before. Rutherford B Hayes in 1876, that was the election that ended the Reconstruction. And we had it with John Quincy Adams,” he says.